50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science

gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs." Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.

Comments

Fox fur!

[Suki I]

I love those coats! This is research for the greater good.

Re:History

[dlt074]

the atomic bomb is only a bad thing if used on a massive global scale, say full on global thermo nuclear war. just having them has done great things for mankind. before its invention the number of deaths in war was steadily increasing into the multi-millions of deaths per war. after the invention of nuclear weapons war deaths have dropped dramatically and do not go into the millions let alone multi-millions like they once did. for the most part they stay pretty local and don't escalate into the blood baths of old. i think the best you can do is some of the African Jihads of the 90's and even those didn't hit pre WWII numbers.

look at how the American press freaked out when the death toll hit 3000 in the Iraq war YEARS after the war started. granted that was politically motivated by their hatred of all things Bush, but still the initial planning expected 10,000 death just to take Baghdad. major battles in the pacific during WWII could easily lose 3000 in hours. the Iraq war death total has a lot to do with asymmetrical warfare and not the threat of nukes. however, look at the korean war where there were two near equal opponents with LARGE armies and almost identical battlefield capabilities. that was kept in check by the threat of nukes.

i for one love nukes and the fruits of our scientists efforts.

Re:History

[corbettw]

I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.

Let's look at the facts: people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day. Not only that, you can have a picnic at Ground Zero. So you're completely full of shit and have probably never been to Hiroshima in the first place.

Secondly, the point the OP was making was that war deaths today are a fraction of the deaths in WW2. You want to compare civilian deaths? The numbers at IraqBodyCount.org are quite suspect, but let's say there were 500,000 civilian deaths just for argument's sake. There were over 100,000,000 civilian deaths in WW2 and almost 3,000,000 deaths in Korea. The numbers in Iraq just don't compare to previous wars.